


Festivities

by Fyre



Series: The Nest [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Found Family, Friendship/Love, Male-Female Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-03
Updated: 2019-05-03
Packaged: 2020-02-16 20:10:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18698338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fyre/pseuds/Fyre
Summary: In the Barton house, Christmas is all about family.





	Festivities

**Author's Note:**

> It's not a... series, persay, but more like a series of random scenes from the Barton homestead. Because my brain is fixating again and won't shut up.

“Daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy, da–”

Clint groans as a bouncing foot lands right on his kidney. The kid may be small, but he’s pretty good as a low-impact weapon. “Daddy’s sleeping.”

Cooper is still and quiet for a second, like he’s doing the math, then yells, “Liar!” and tackles the blankets and Clint’s poor, helpless body trapped underneath them. It takes him a few tries, but he finds his dad’s head eventually. “I got you!”

Clint lunges up, wrapping the kid up in a blanket burrito and tumbling him down into the narrow space between Laura and his own body. “Gotcha more!”

“Let go! We have to go downstairs!”

Clint peers down at him in the half-light from the hall. “Oh yeah? Still looks dark to me.” He yawns and droops his head onto Cooper’s chest. “I’m so sleepy. We should all sleep some more.” He can’t help himself as he starts snoring.

“Dad! Wake up! You’re being weird!” Cooper squirms indignantly. “We have to go downstairs! Santa came!”

On the other side of the kicking burrito, Laura gropes out for the clock, tilting it toward her. “Five seventeen,” she says sleepily. “It’s a new record.”

“Yeah.” Clint props his chin on the pouting Cooper’s chest. “A whole eight minutes more.”

“Daaaaaaaaaaaad!”

“What do you think, Laur? Think we should let him go downstairs?”

Laura rolls over to face them, reaching out to tickle Cooper’s ear. “You know who would be really excited about downstairs?”

Cooper’s eyes go wide like – ha, whaddya know? – it’s Christmas. “Auntie Nat!”

“And you know what?” Clint lifts his head to look sadly down at his son. “Auntie Nat has never had a real Christmas before.”

“No Christmas?” Cooper looks horrified. “No tree? No Santa?” His eyes go even wider and he whispers in dismay, “No _presents_?!”

“Nope.” Clint shakes his head sadly. “Not a one.” Now that the kicking and wriggling has eased off, he loosens the blankets. “You wanna go and show her how it’s done?”

The boy moves like he’s made of some weird cross of jello and rubber. He’s out of the bed, over his dad – not without stepping right where Clint _really_ wishes he hadn’t – and his bare feet patter away down the hall. 

Laura scoots closer, slipping an arm around his middle. “Does that make us bad hosts?” she murmurs, smiling against his shoulder. 

He wraps his arm around her shoulder. “Nah. Doesn’t count. Nat’s family.”

“Maybe we should have warned her.”

He snickers, curling his fingers into his wife’s hair. “If she didn’t hear him yelling, I don’t know why Fury hired her. She’ll–” There’s an ear-splitting screech from downstairs: Cooper, somehow even more excited than before. Clint winces. “Maybe this wasn’t the greatest idea…”

Laura nuzzles his neck and kisses him under the chin. “You made your adopt-a-troublemaker bed. You get to lie in it.”

“Hey.” He tugs her hair fondly. “You helped.”

She lifts her head to smile at him. “Of course I did. That’s the fun.” She drops a kiss on the tip of his nose as footfalls thunder back along the hall towards the door. “Be asleep.”

As one, they drop their heads back onto the pillows and start snoring loudly. 

“Mommy! Daddy!” 

This time Coop doesn’t even bother with tugging the blankets and climbing around them. He lands right on top of them and Clint yelps as an elbow goes right for his solar plexus.

“Coop!” Laura sits up like the Wrath of Mom. 

Clint isn’t sure which of them freezes up first. 

“Remember what I said.” And she’s an angel again, smoothing Cooper’s hair. “Be careful.”

Cooper nods urgently. “But auntie Nat! She saw Santa!”

A silhouette stretches on the wall outside the door, not quite coming in. 

“That so?” Clint says, smiling. 

Cooper nods. “She says she saw him downstairs putting out hundreds and millions of presents! And she says he ate all the cookies and drank all the milk.”

Laura laughs. “Yeah, I bet _he_ did,” she says, giving Clint that look.

 _Someone had to_ , he signs behind Cooper’s back, making a face at her. He props himself up on one arm. “Nat? That true? You giving away Santa’s secrets?”

She peers around the doorframe, as if she’s afraid of getting in the way. “Cooper asked me to watch since I sleep closest to the stairs.” 

“She’s my spy,” Cooper declares, beaming. “She’s the _best_ spy.”

“Hey!” Clint sits up. 

Nat is smiling that small, content smile she sometimes gets. “Can’t handle the truth, Barton?”

He doesn’t get a chance to counter as Cooper grabs his face between small, determined hands. 

“Can we go and see the presents?” He leans closer for emphasis. “Please?”

Clint nods towards Laura. “What do you think, Momma Bear?”

“Well, he did say please…”

“Yes!” Cooper is off the bed like greased lightning and slams into Natasha, who doesn’t even stagger. “Come on, Auntie Nat! I want to see what Santa got for you?”

Her voice drifts back to them as they get out of their bed. “Santa only brings gifts for children, Coop. I’m not a child.”

“She’s going to be really disappointed when she sees that tiara you got her,” Laura says with a chuckle. 

“What about those panda slippers from you?” Clint shakes his head with a mournful sigh. “All her illusions shattered.”

They exchange smiles, Laura checks that Lilla is still – miraculously – sleeping and they hurry after Natasha and Cooper. The pair can cause enough chaos on a regular day, but unleashed on a room full of presents, Clint can already imagine the carnage. 

Cooper is already knee-deep in crumpled paper, screeching in delight at every new thing that is cool for all of five seconds, then put aside because there’s another parcel and another one. Nat is somewhere behind the Christmas tree and when it lights up, she reappears.

“You’re really getting into this Christmas thing, aren’tcha?” Clint says, laughing. 

She grins, tucking a stray hair behind her ear. “It’s like in the movies.”

“But you haven’t even opened anything yet,” says Laura, as she joins Clint at the foot of the stairs, slipping her arm around his waist. 

“Opened…” Natasha looks suddenly like Cooper. “I get a present?”

Laura sighs dramatically and looks at Clint. “She didn’t read the gift tags?”

Clint returns it with a grave shake of his head. “She didn’t read the gift tags.”

Natasha stands still as a statue for all of five seconds, then she spins around and dives onto her knees in the middle of the room. “Which gift tags?”

“Mine are Mickey Mouse!” Cooper crawls over to her to help. 

“This,” Clint sighs happily, watching them flick over every gift tag, searching for any with Nat’s name, “this is why I became a dad.”

His wife squeezes his waist and he knows she gets it. Every time they get to see Nat forget who she was and just be is like watching one of their own kids figuring something out. 

And when she finds her first present, she tears into it as eagerly as Cooper.

By the time all their presents are open, the living room looks like a paper shredder exploded and Nat is sitting against the couch, beaming. She’s wearing her new tiara, the oversized panda slippers, a giant purple Team Barton hoodie, and has fingers sticky with candy already. Cooper has picked out his toy of choice – a tipper truck that he’s driving around on the floor – and every time he drives up by Nat, she makes an arch with her knees for a tunnel.

“I like Christmas,” she says, licking sticky ginger off of her fingers.

Clint smiles, sprawling on the arm of Laura’s chair, his arm draped along the back. “I figured you might.” 

“We got you something too,” Laura adds. It was her idea, but Clint was the one who picked it out. Teamwork, that was what made a marriage. One person to have the ideas, the other to point at something and go “that one looks pointy”.

Natasha blinks, her thumb in her mouth. “There’s more?”

Laura hands up the small square box and Clint tosses it to land neatly on Nat’s lap. 

“Since you can’t wear the sweater at work,” he says. “Santa isn’t exactly up on work wardrobe codes.”

She looks suspicious, but opens it up. Laura leans into his side, resting her head against his ribs, and he runs his fingers through her hair.

“It–” Natasha’s voice is choked as she lifts the necklace out of the box, the chains dangling from her fingers. “It’s perfect.”

“And about as subtle as Clint gets.” Laura unfolds from the chair and picks her way across the floor towards Natasha. She sits down on the couch by her. “Want me to help you put it on?”

Natasha nods, pressing her lips together. She leans forward, pulling her hair aside as Laura takes the necklace and for a second, Clint remembers the girl who wouldn’t turn her back on anyone and now, there she is, closing her eyes, baring her neck, and trusting them to keep her safe. 

“There.” Laura fastens it in place, straightening it. “When you need to remember which clown to look for when you want to come home, that’ll remind you.”

Natasha is staring blindly at the floor, tracing the pendant with her fingertips. “Thank you,” she whispers.

When Laura slides down to sit on the floor beside her, Natasha leans into her at once, her hand still at her throat.

“Coop,” Clint says softly. When the boy looks at him, Clint nods to his mom and his Aunt Nat. The kid is a hell of a lot smarter than his old man and he drops his truck right away to climb into Natasha’s lap, wrapping his arms around her. 

“That’s an arrow,” he says, peering at her necklace. He beamed at her. “Like daddy’s.”

Natasha raises her eyes from Cooper’s. She’s crying. Her eyes are bright and wet and it’s the first time he’s seen her smiling through them. “Yeah,” she agrees and Clint swears he’s just got some dust in his eye. “Just like daddy’s.”


End file.
